Blogs from Barossa Valley, South Australia, Australia, Oceania

Promptly at 10am Trevor arrived in his 1935 Auburn Phaeton, or convertible. The car had been purchased new by Trevor’s grandfather and used in the family businesses for many years before being stored in a barn. In 1995 Trevor began the restoration and started doing tours in 1997. In addition to the tours, Trevor does some mechanical maintenance and other work for some of the wineries and is well known in the community. The day was a bit cool, but sunny and dry, so off we went to the first of five wineries we planned on visiting. Yalumba is a large family owned operation and is one of the few wineries which actually make their own casks. We stopped in the cask shop first. There was no active production going on but we could see the ... read more

Today is January 8thand I am trying to stay dry! We are on Bintan Island, Indonesia, but that is for another blog. It feels as though the last three weeks were a whirlwind of activity, adventure and exploration. We experience nearly every mode of transportation available as we explored Australia. After returning home from Cairns, it was time to explore the city of Melbourne by bus, train and trolley! What a beautiful city! Downtown Melbourne is situated on the mouth of the Yarra River. A cruise down the river gave us a ducks-eye-view of this beautiful, cosmopolitan city, including a short visit to historic Williamstown. Melbourne is a city of contrasts. Tall skyscrapers are flanked by historic landmarks and well preserved buildings. There is a vibrant Chinatown and an Italian precinct that is known for it’s ... read more

The Barossa Valley is one of the premier wine regions of Australia, famous for growing Shiraz grapes. Wolf Blass is based here, as is Penfolds and Jacob Creek. It's a picturesque area, with many more wineries and vineyards in a stunning South Australia setting.... read more

My goodness, it was cold this morning, and the wind didn’t make things any better. Frank had to get up through the night to wind the awning in because it was so windy. One good thing about it was that I was able to justify why I found it necessary to pack my boots, and other winter type clothes. I even found myself looking for scarves in opportunity shops. We did a tour of the shops in Nurioopta and then went to Chateau Tanunda in Tanunda to try to relive a very pleasant wine experience from a recent dinner in an Ocean Grove restaurant. We tracked down the wine, but wasn’t as nice as we remembered. A phone call to the caravan supplies business in Adelaide confirmed that our fridge part had arrived, so we did ... read more

We were up bright and early and left Port Augusta behind us heading for Clare. We were glad to see the change in vegetation to the east of Port Augusta and it was lovely to see some green ! David was very impressed with the cropping area we came through, there were some great looking wheat crops as well as canola and lupins. Our first stop of the day was Clare which is a really pretty town, from Clare we headed toward Tanunda; where we wanted to stop at Maggie Beer's Farm Shop, and planned to stop at a few wineries on the way. The first winery we stopped at was Greg Cooley Wines - although a very young winery this was our favourite of the day. Greg and Kelli gave us some suggestions on which ... read more